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'Caring thinking' has been described as '... a fusion of emotional and cognitive thinking ... [empowering] students to establish ... compassionate judgements ...' (Sharp, 2007, p. 248). In the past, emotion may have been regarded as a barrier to sound articulation and judgement (ibid.), but it is increasingly accepted that emotions are judgements in their own right (Todd, 2014). Emotional awareness encourages self-reflection and, most importantly, the ability to apply the concepts of perspective, scale and place to various contexts (Davidson et al, 2005). These characteristics are prerequisites for critical thinking in the classroom, a mode of learning which Kenway and Fahey (2011) have termed 'emoscapes': '... the movement and mobilization of emotions on intersecting global, national and personal scales' (p. 187). This mode of learning increases students' active participation by combining their everyday experiences (Firth et al, 2010) with processes operating at multiple scales, from local to global. This ability to evoke feelings and animate individual judgements reconceptualises emotional engagement as a form of intelligence (Kenway and Youdell, 2011).
Could emotional enquiry be an antidote for passive learning spaces? Can emotions be an effective medium for fostering student engagement in the classroom? An opportunity arose recently for me to explore this in practice, in a key stage 3 lesson on 'Why is Ghana a lowincome country?'
The Development Game
During my first PGCE placement I had been allocated a class of 28 year 8 boys studying a topic on uneven development. This provided an opportunity for the students to reflect on their personal geographies and start developing their own sense of place (Jones et al, 2016). They were encouraged to explore their identities as global citizens by considering 'others', through the lens of global responsibility, philosophy and ethics (Meylahn, 2009). Global citizenship is closely tied to 'feeling global' (Germann Molz, 2017). Thus, emotional participation is critical to the creation and experience of geographic knowledge (Hargreaves, 2001). Deconstructing one's identity can be a valuable form of empowerment, so much so that Kretz (2004) has associated effective pedagogy with critical moral agency, suggesting that students' engagement with their emotions plays a crucial role in ethical identity construction. Can emotion be an effective medium for fostering student engagement in the classroom?
In previous lessons the students had...